“Why would you say that?”
He grinned. “Instead of going to visit with your gelding, your little princess accidentally picked that wild little mare in the next stall. Nearly got her head kicked in for her trouble.”
“Oh, dear. Just what we need. Between that and nearly shooting you, ‘Hope’ needs a full-time keeper....” Amanda pursed her lips, looking thoughtful. “I need a favor from you, Dylan. A serious favor.”
“Name it,” he said, eager to put their working relationship back on track.
“I want you to keep a close eye on her, close as you can. When she’s sitting around the table eating with the rest of the staff, try to steer her around conversations that’ll get her into trouble, and when she’s out around the animals, make sure she doesn’t wander into danger.”
He nodded, then asked, “She’s really important to you, isn’t she?”
Amanda hesitated, leaving him to wonder if he’d crossed a line by asking. Amanda might be unassuming, but she was still a Colton, and except for occasionally gushing over Cheyenne’s latest development, she’d never been the type to talk about her personal life.
Looking ill at ease, she finally answered, “To tell you the truth, I didn’t even like her at first. She was so popular, so gorgeous. Compared to her, I felt like—” Cutting herself off, she shook her head. “But she figured it out fast. Somehow, she just got me, and she did everything she could to make me feel like I really mattered, like I was special, too. It may not seem like much, but at that time, in that place, it meant everything to me.”
Surprised to realize that being a Colton hadn’t made her immune to the same self-doubts that plagued mere mortals, Dylan nodded soberly. “Then I give you my word, Amanda. As long as I’m on this ranch, I’ll make sure Hope stays safe.”
* * *
It took forever for Hope to clean the mess Trip Lowden’s sister, Tawny, had left in her bathroom. But as aggravating as it was to pick up the piles of damp towels thrown haphazardly on the floor and scrub the makeup spattered across every surface, Hope was happy to be out of Trip’s range and happier still that his slob of a sibling and her hypercritical mother were both out for the day.
As she rubbed at a stubborn spot left on the mirror, Hope couldn’t help but wonder. Had she been as inconsiderate of her own maids? Not anywhere near as rude or messy—a person would almost have to try to come even close to Tawny—but as casually indifferent? As heedless of their efforts?
Though she’d always asked after her maids’ families and given liberal bonuses, she knew she’d never really respected how hard they worked to keep strangers’ living spaces gleaming. And to Hope’s surprise, there was an entire array of tips and tricks she’d never had the chance to pick up, as she’d begun to appreciate while cleaning her own rented room in Iowa.
After finishing the bathroom, she moved on to the bedroom, where she stripped and remade Tawny’s bed once she’d moved her open laptop to the nightstand. Remembering her financial situation, Hope thought of using the computer to look up local pawnshops. While she weighed the risks, the screen automatically refreshed.
Heart pounding wildly, she barely stifled a shriek at the image peering back at her—a face looking out from beneath the banner of a well-known gossip site.
It was her, the younger, blonde her, crowned with a tiara and giving her brightest smile and her queenliest wave as she stood in her shimmering, cobalt evening gown, onstage in Atlantic City. Taken twelve years before, the photo might be dated, but her cheekbones remained as high, her chin as delicate. And underneath her contacts, her eyes were the same striking blue.
Stricken as she was by the sight of her own picture, it took her a moment to calm down enough to notice the headline just beneath it, a headline that sent her bolting to the bathroom, where she was sick in Tawny’s spotless sink.
“Oh, no, no, no,” she whimpered. “You couldn’t do that, Renzo. Please tell me you didn’t.”
But a return to check the story confirmed that her ex-husband had...
And raised the toll of death and destruction that followed her disastrous decisions. A toll that shattered every last trace of her courage as it dropped her to her knees.
* * *
Upset as she was, Hope knew she couldn’t stay here, couldn’t risk letting Tawny catch her staring at a computer image of her own face. Couldn’t explain why she was weeping over an article reporting the death of a missing New Jersey woman’s father.
Hope forced herself to stand, to go about the business of gathering soiled towels and linens. Thanks to her unauthorized break in the stable earlier, she would be hours late taking her basket to the basement laundry—and lucky if the laundress’s wrath didn’t strike her dead.
Even though Mrs. Black’s sharp tones and harsh stares frankly scared Hope, she didn’t make it five steps down the hallway before she ran into another delay as Trip Lowden stepped out of a little alcove, his perfectly white teeth bared in a predatory smile.
“Well, hello, pretty lady. Funny we should run into each other like this again.”
In what was undoubtedly meant to be a rakish gesture, he swept his expensively styled blond bangs out of his brown eyes. Hope didn’t like what she saw in them, and worse yet, she was so upset, she didn’t know how to hide her own revulsion.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, feigned compassion oozing from him like an oily slick. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
Gritting her teeth, she lowered her gaze. “I don’t want to trouble you, sir, and I’m already running late with my work.”
“If anyone says anything, you just tell them you were with me.” He moved in closer, crowding her personal space the way he had this morning, when he’d crept up on her as she was neatening his bedroom. “After all, I’m Mr. Colton’s stepson. There’s so much I can do to help if you’ll just let me.”
When she’d still been Aurora Worthington-Calabretta, Hope had known exactly how to deal with a handsy little wannabe like Trip Lowden. But now, as the most junior maid on the staff, her skin broke out in gooseflesh as she tried to think of how to put him in his place without losing hers.
She murmured, “I’m sorry, Mr. Lowden. I really have to go now. I’m not feeling well and—”
“Don’t go.”
When he reached past the laundry basket she was holding, she shifted to balance it on one hip, every muscle tensing in preparation for his touch. He might be bigger and more powerful, but considering the amount of private self-defense training that her father had insisted she take, she had every confidence that she could lay out the twerp. Which would mean she could kiss her cover—and Dead River Ranch—goodbye.
Reminding herself she had no other place to go, she somehow managed to keep still as Trip removed her glasses.
“I don’t know why you hide that beautiful face of yours behind these,” he said.
“To see, sir. Just to see.” She stuck her hand out, her eyes welling as she imagined her poor father seeing her reduced to this. “Give them to me, please. So I can get back to my duties.”
He chuckled as he peered through the lenses. “Why, they’re as clear as window glass.”
Her heart thumped as she grappled for some explanation. “The prescription’s slight, I’ll admit. But they help keep me from getting a headache when I—”
“You really are hiding,” he said, sounding so sure of it she wanted to scream. “Deliberately hiding your face from—”
“I don’t like to be bothered,” she blurted as panic coiled tight inside her. What if Trip figured out who she was? What would he do with that knowledge?
“By men, you mean?” he asked.
She nodded, her face burning, and then tried to slip past him.
He blocked her way, his face lit up like a little boy’s on Christmas morning. “You mean, you prefer women? You’re a lesbian?”
She stared in disgust, for there was no mistaking his excitement. Or the suspicion that he’d pursue her all the more a
ggressively if she relied on such an excuse. Pervert.
“No, sir,” she answered slowly and carefully. “What I said was that I don’t like being bothered. By anyone, sir.”
“You might fool those others, but you’re not fooling me, Hope,” he said, reaching out to skim her cheekbone with his fingertips.
She jerked away, skin crawling. “Leave me alone,” she warned, then tried another lie. “I’m feeling really— I think I’m going to be sick.”
Clapping her free hand over her mouth, she whirled around and started running. As she made for the stairwell, she willed herself to keep hold of the laundry basket, for there was no way she was coming back upstairs to reclaim it.
Maybe Trip was afraid she’d make good on her threat and heave all over his black cashmere sweater, or maybe he’d simply tired of his game. Whichever the case, he didn’t follow, allowing Hope to calm down enough to make it to the basement without further incident.
She crept downstairs as quietly as possible, praying that Mrs. Black’s poor hearing would protect her. Her back turned, the older woman was grumbling under her breath as she ironed the freshly washed sheets, except for those Hope had neglected to bring downstairs by the appointed hour of three o’clock.
Her pulse thrumming in her ears, she quietly set down the basket and backed toward the steps. But her hopes of a quick escape were dashed when the laundress whipped around, her steel-gray ponytail flying, to glare at her with the most intimidating gaze that Hope had ever seen. It didn’t help that the woman’s left eye had filmed over, turning it an opaque, milky white. The younger maids swore that Mrs. Black, who was said to have Native blood flowing through her veins, used that pale eye to see things that no one else could. Apparently, those things included the lowliest new maid’s attempt to slink away.
“I’m sorry I’m so late,” Hope offered, struggling to keep her teeth from chattering. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
The stare lengthened, and Hope saw that the older woman was keenly aware of its effect on others.
When she did speak, her contempt echoed loudly through the basement. “Learn to read a clock, for starters. I’ll be here half the night, sorting all this out, no thanks to you.”
“I could help,” Hope tried again, her stomach squirming.
“You could what?” the laundress asked, cupping a hand to what must be her better ear.
“Help you. Or you could go home right now, and I’ll take care of—”
“Get. Out,” the laundress warned.
Hope didn’t wait to be asked a second time, but fled upstairs, her face so hot and her skin so clammy that she nearly barreled over a black-haired maid named Misty Mayhew on her way to the back door.
“Well, excuse you!” the younger woman snapped, her brilliant blue eyes sparking.
Hope didn’t waste a second on an explanation. She just kept running, fast as she could, all the way out to the stable.
Chapter 3
A solidly built male traveler in his late thirties exited the 737, relieved to finally escape the whining brat who’d been kicking at his seat back for the past two hours. As desperately as he’d wanted to whip around and scream at the kid’s mother to keep her whelp in line, Joey Santorini had been forced to keep his mouth zipped.
The last thing he could afford was to get hauled off this plane and interrogated for hours, maybe even locked up if the TSA saw through his fake ID. As bad as it would be to find himself back in custody, things would rapidly go downhill when word got out that he had screwed up.
Screwed up just like last time, with the car in Iowa.
Sweat beading on his meaty forehead, Joey remembered his cousin Luca, his partner on the job for years, desperately trying to explain how there’d been no way to predict that some lust-struck grocery-store punk would give his all for customer service. Only hours after their return to Jersey, Joey’s cousin had abruptly vanished, and it was understood that asking about Luca’s fate would be seriously unhealthy.
Instead, Joey had been given a last chance to make things right, to visit an old friend of Aurora Worthington’s—a connection so obscure, so remote, she hadn’t yet been checked out—to finally silence the one woman who threatened everything.
As much as Joey hated working with strangers this far from his home turf, he’d been forced to rely on freelance local talent to get into the location. But the man had come highly recommended, so Joey picked up his pace, his dark glower parting the teeming school of fellow travelers like so many frightened fish.
He clenched his jaw, telling himself it wasn’t the terminal’s other passengers who needed to beware of him, but the sleek, blonde bitch who’d put all this in motion. For four years, she’d never had a bit of trouble prancing from one glitzy charity event to the next, showering her much older husband’s money on the sick kids, homeless puppies or abused women she’d adopted as her causes. But let her find out where that money really came from, and she couldn’t betray the man who doted on her fast enough, along with the organization he’d built up from the ground floor.
Joey Santorini swore to himself he was going to make good on this chance, to recast himself as the hero rather than the scapegoat. After all, this friend of Aurora’s had not only the land, but money enough to keep Aurora in the style she’d always expected as her due.
Time you got taken down a notch, he thought as he stepped out into the bracing Colorado air. For his own sake, as well as in memory of the cousin whose name he must never again mention, he vowed he was going to give the pampered blonde bitch everything that she had coming.
Spotting the white panel van with the Elite Electrical logo as it pulled up to the curb, he grinned savagely, eager to begin the drive into Wyoming. And even more eager to spend a little quality time with Miss New Jersey, where he would teach her that sex didn’t always have to come with roses, diamonds and a fancy set of silk sheets.
Sometimes it came with fear and blood and death.
* * *
Though he’d spent countless hours eating, talking and laughing around the communal dinner table with the ranch’s other employees, Dylan had grown to hate it lately. He was all too attuned to the measuring looks that kept darting his way—looks that told him the word had gotten out about his DNA test and that some were already wondering if the results would transform him from the hard worker they knew to an entitled princeling. And wondering as well if he would replace Amanda Colton as Jethro’s heir apparent.
Their curiosity was bad enough, but he’d noticed a few resentful glances from those jealous of his possible good fortune, an “honor” he’d happily hand over to any one of them if he could only go back to knowing who he was and where he came from. But when the normally straitlaced new maid, Misty Mayhew, started batting her lashes at him and the head cook loudly insisted that he should get the choicest chop from the platter, he pushed back from the table, his face on fire and his appetite gone. “Dammit, that’s enough of that. I’m finished.”
Only after he had stormed out of the kitchen did he realize he had just made a complete fool of himself. And that the newest of the ranch employees, Hope Woods, had not shown for dinner at all.
Cursing under his breath, he stalked upstairs to his room to grab his jacket on his way back out to the stable. Though he was in no mood for conversation, let alone fit company for some pampered prima donna, he could at least do one thing right this evening and keep his promise to Amanda by looking for her friend.
As soon as he stepped outdoors, the postsunset chill hit him, a biting harbinger of the colder months ahead. Used to it, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and picked up his pace.
Bingo and Betsy bounded up, seemingly from nowhere, and this time, he let the two dogs follow him inside. Though one of the stable lights had been left on, he saw and heard no sign of any human presence.
Just in case, he called, “Hope? It’s Dylan. Are you out here? Thought you’d want to know you’re missing dinner.”
There wa
s no answer, except from both of the English shepherds, who shuffled their feet and licked their chops, as if to remind him of his debt from this morning.
“Sorry, you two beggars,” he said. “There was no steak to swipe this evening, but how about some rawhide?”
Wagging their fringed tails, the two dogs barked in unison, then plopped down on their wriggling rear ends to await their treats. Once he returned from the feed room, where he kept some rawhide stashed, Dylan left them chewing happily and went to check PW’s stall. The chestnut looked up from the hay he had been munching, but Hope was nowhere in sight, and there was no response when he called for her again.
So where the heck had she gone? Up to her own room, on the floor above his?
Come to think of it, he realized, he had never seen her dining at the employees’ table. Did she think she was too good to eat among them, or was she scared that she would stand out, like a brightly colored orchid among a bunch of prairie weeds?
One thing was for certain: every red-blooded man among them would have noticed her. The women, too, he suspected, at least enough to wonder how someone who scrubbed and swept and changed linens for a living maintained her elegant manicure.
Snorting at the thought, he had almost convinced himself to go back inside, maybe even apologize for his outburst, when he heard the sound of a soft sniffle. Not an equine sound, but one as human as it was distinctly female.
Following it, he crept nearer to an empty stall, where the hands stacked straw for bedding. There he found her sitting on a bale in the spill of dim light, her shoulders hunched and shaking, and no wonder, for she wore only the ugly maid’s dress and a sweater far too light for the evening chill. Her wavy hair was down again, the horn-rimmed glasses missing, as if this was the only place where she could be herself.
Though he made no effort to move quietly, she didn’t even look up when he came inside. Forgetting his anger and frustration, he slipped off his own jacket and laid it over her shoulders. “You’ll freeze out here like this. It’s getting colder by the minute.”
The Colton Heir Page 3